Friends don’t let friends drive stockers.

I was at ALRO Steel yesterday, picking out some steel to make the air bag cups for the Riviera, when my phone rang. It was my pal Jake Moomey, calling to tell me that he wasn’t going to come out and drop off the plates he makes for the cups, as he had to stay home for his kids to get off the school bus. He followed that up by saying since he is currently putting an identical Air-Lift system in our friend Destin’s ’63 Riviera, he might as well make a second set of cups and spacers for mine. Not only that, but he said he’d take photos of the job as he does it, to help me out.

I have my friend Johns bead roller in my shop right now, to make the floor pan patch panels for the car, and the block-off panels for the firewall where the original heater is. John has lent me this handy tool before, along with his shrinker/stretcher, and Panel-Bond gun, even when it’s inconvenienced him. He has an 8 foot sheet metal brake, which he lets me use when I need to do something that simply bending sheet metal over the edge of the bench won’t do.

My friend Kirk went to the guy I traded some parts to for a console for the Riviera, and my pal Jay brought it over from Detroit to our place last weekend when he and his wife came to Kalamazoo for the weekend, saving me a day long road trip. My buddy Crafty B did some welding on the aluminum oil pan for the engine, as I’m not able to do that at home.

The only reason I have the car is that my friend John sold me the car, and a second, slightly rougher one, for scrap metal prices, and then lent me his trailer to haul them home (which I unknowingly damaged slightly unloading the cars). He was happy for me when I sold the rough one for more than I paid for the pair, which I had told him I wanted to do when I bought them. He could have sold them himself, but he knew I liked them and wanted to build one.

We don’t do things in a vacuum. Help, support and inspiration (and, sometimes tools) come from our friends and family when we need them, get stuck, or run out of steam. I hope I’m as generous and supportive to my friends, because I certainly wouldn’t be able to this stuff, or be where I am, without them.